Search

If you are shit(in the literal meaning)-sensitive, do yourself a favor and skip reading the rest of this post. If you are parents of young children I welcome you on board.

You know how they say that kids have absolutely the worst timing ever?? It is SOOOOO TRUEEEE.

When we picked Yianni up from school yesterday we needed to do some grocery shopping and decided to head towards the nearest grocery store. Little did I know of what was about to happen.

Half way through our shopping, Iliana turned to me with the dreadful look on her face and while crossing her legs mumbled something about needing to go peepee. I spontaneously gave her the oh-no-couldn’t-you-have-picked-a-worst-place intimidating look and begged her to try and keep it for 3 minutes longer. 2 Nanoseconds later, Yianni turned to me with the same look but added that not only does he need to go peepee, he also has to go kaka.

OH NO.

I was lucky enough to have a five year old son who could still think straight while he reminded me that we should probably add some wet tissues to the grocery list.

As N.& I are more or less some kind of germaphobes we avoid public toilets like the plague. For the time being (yesterday included) the yellow potty has saved us psychologically more than physically a zillion times already. Nothing has been cherished more than this potty.

We rushed to the check out, paid for our things, got a couple of extra plastic bags and headed out to the parking lot. Please note windchill factor 9 at that moment.

I semi undressed Iliana while Yiannis was desperately seeking for a green plant to pee on water. Iliana was peeing while moaning that she is freezing (she probably didn’t get anything contagious but she will be lucky if she doesn’t get pneumonia instead). I wiped Iliana dry and let Yiannis take his turn with the potty. OMG. What is this boy eating?? Or better said, how much is he eating??

When he finished there was a precious moment (or two) of too-disgusted-to-talk silence. Yiannis gave me the semi relieved semi horrified look and asked me: NOW WHAT?

And out came the lie: “Oh, honey, I don’t mind. I ll just wipe the potty clean with the tissues and throw everything in the plastic bag (small reminder: windchill factor 9). Mommies are like that, they don’t get disgusted by their kids kaka”. By now both kids looked at me with the don’t-give-us-that-crap face

After I had thoroughly used half of the wet tissues to clean the potty I proudly turned to my son and said: “see? it’s clean” and Yianni replied: “mama, I have more…”

A minute later the (still loaded) shopping cart started drifting away. Iliana was dressed but pretty disgusted with what she had just witnessed, Yiannis had still his pants down and his unwiped butt in the air and I was chasing the shopping cart to avoid it from crashing into another car.

How I wish that someone would have been there with me to share these lovely parenting moments.

15 Responses to “saved by the potty”

I can imagine how you felt. You are so right about the bed timing!
I stopped fearing public toilets – all what you need is some disinfecting wipes to wipe the seat and your kids’ hands after and some disinfecting gel or soap for your hands after. It is always smart to have it in your handbag. I have red somewhere that best way to avoid the most of the infections is to wash your hand thoroughly more often. The other thing that it does not matter how protective we mothers are kids need to learn safety in public toilets too. The earlier the better. Your son is using toilet at school anyway.
You must excuse me if I sound too relaxed about the public toilets – here in Iceland they are less worried about all these diseases like hepatitis A and B because they just did not have them until the few years before – we just had all three of us vaccinated because we go abroad sometimes. Anyway I admire you the fighting mother 🙂

Oh Tatu, I was in fits of laughter. That windchill factor is pretty bad. I carry oodles of wet wipes, hand sanitizer, toilet paper from home as I think quite insanely that paper from public bathrooms have a ton of germs. My girls do this to me quite often and I always wonder if it just comes on as we do grocery shopping because of how inconvenient it is or whether it is their natural tendency. Either way… I’m always scouting for clean bathrooms and have identified a few we can go to, should the need arise. I have been known to drive all the way to the local doctors offices by the local hospital and use those bathrooms because they are soooo clean, my children think I’m nuts, but you see, they appreciate a clean bathroom nevertheless 🙂